Like someone said on YouTube, “bekommen” and “to become” are famous false friends. My English teacher used to tell the following (double) joke for emphatic reasons:

German tourist in a London restaurant. He would like to eat beef steak, medium rare, and calls the waiter.
“What will it be, sir?”
“I’d like a bloody beef steak.”
“Right away, sir. You want some fucking potatoes with that?”

He waits for 45 minutes. Feeling impatient he again calls the waiter:
“Excuse me, when can I finally become my beef steak?”
“Never, I presume, sir.”

Info bit: “waiter” has nothing to do with “warten”, but with “aufwarten”! Old term, but still a good explanation. “Lady-in-Waiting” might be comparable.

Another one: stream. Not to be confused with “Strom”. Germans know that the river Rhine is a “Strom”, or the river Elbe, so “Strom” means quite a lot of liquid (apart from it being “electrical energy” also), a large river that flows into an ocean. As a pupil I was rather shocked when I read about “streams of blood”…
I think a proper translation for “stream” is “Rinnsal”.

I found a blog bumper sticker saying: Friends don’t let Friends blog in a drunk state of mind.

YOU ARE HILARIOUS!
And I got them all right, are there trickier ones in the English languages? Are there some with French at all, i can’t think of faux amis because French sounds so different from English. The nasal pronunciation has me think that there is no connection at all. I know I am wrong about that

Thanks for this video!

Nice one, I always enjoy watching your videos! As a picky German, I have to correct you, though:
It is “die Fabrik”, not “der Fabrik” - maybe this is a false-friend-special-around-the-corner-mixture with “der Stoff”?
Regarding “See” it is even trickier: You are complete right with the difference “die See = ocean” (although rarely used) and “der See = lake” but in the sentence it does not always work due to grammar I could hardly explain *ashamed*.
“Ich schwamm in der See” would mean ocean (besides it sounds rather poetic). “Ich schwamm in dem See” is a sentence with a lake. So better to use “Meer” whenever you are talking about the sea.

My very false friend is “sensible”, which is very close to the German word “sensibel” (being sensitive).

Keep up the funny blogging!

I agree on the sensible and sensitive thing. it’s hard to distinguish between them since German has sensible (as in sensitive) - do you have a eselsbrücke (nemonic) for that?

@Phil: you’re very welcome! There are so many more I could have done… I had to pick only a few. I don’t really know enough French to know many ‘faux amis’. There’s ‘dépenser’ which doesn’t mean ‘dispense’ but ‘to spend’ (money), which is pretty similar to how ’spenden’ means ‘donate’ not ’spend’. Tricky.

@42317: Hilarious joke. The funniest part is that it probably happened in real life.

@Bob: Thanks for the correction. I kicked myself after I uploaded the video! But yes I know the grammar makes it tricky - if ‘die See’ is Dativ it becomes ‘der See’. So ‘Ich schwimme in der See’, but then ‘Ich gehe in die See’ (because it’s Akkusativ if there’s movement). Ah German grammar.

From
http://www.websters-dictionary-online.com

sensible (adjective):

1. Showing reason or sound judgment

2. Able to feel or perceive

3. Acting with or showing thought and good sense

4. Marked by the exercise of good judgment or common sense in practical matters

5. Readily perceived by the senses

6. Aware intuitively or intellectually of something sensed

7. Proceeding from good sense or judgment

sensitive (adjective):

1. Responsive to physical stimuli

2. Having acute mental or emotional sensibility

3. Able to feel or perceive

4. Hurting

5. Used officially of classified information or matters affecting national security

Looks like there’s a good deal of similarities. That makes the “great difference” being taught in English lessons more or less a myth.

About false friends between English and French: It would be logical that there are false friends, which are unrelated to pronunciation. French has added many words to the English language following the Norman conquest and it would be only natural that the meaning of some French loanwords, being separareted from their origin, has taken a different path. Chaucer already punned on differences. Language change is a funny thing.

But my French is a bit rusted and does not reach far beyond the necessities in a bakery or supermarket, so the question must be answered by someone else.

Oh, what actually DID happen in my presence was a friend of mine ordering “a great coke” somewhere around Picadilly Circus. The clerk looked at him quite puzzled…

Reading US military news I came to think that a “cutter” and a “Kutter” might differ in meaning. A “Kutter” in German means a rather small boat, often for catching fish, whereas the US Coast Guard’s newest cutter is “a 418-foot vessel” worth half a billion dollars…

(Sorry for the double post)

hey,
you just made me think of A FRENCH faux amis

VASISTAS is not equal to WAS IST DAS (as in what is that in german) - vasistas is a term used for a special kind of windows that only existed in France. during world war two german soldiers didn’t know what that was or what it served and asked wasistdas (or vasistas in french pronunciation) and thus the french adopted it because there wasn’t a real word for that in their language. funny, huh?

i can’t believe I forget about this. we learned about it in school. seems like my french is getting rustier very day!

cu ph

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberlicht

(sorry, but i figured a link might be helpful - wikipedia entry is in german though)

Ah, how about
“poisson” versus “poison”?
So kommt das Gift in den Fisch!

what about

ample (adj. ~big) does not equal die Ampel (traffic light)

How about the very common mix-up with “aktuell/actual/actually”. Another one would be “konsequent/consequent(ly)”, both false friends regularly to be found in business presentations. Or this one - usually not in business presentations, or at least not in the common sense of business: “Puff/puff”.
False friends are a fun subject in any case.

How about starting another thread on translation issues referring to underlying meanings, i.e. words or phrases you can easily put your foot in (Fettnäpfchen), such as asking to people who are about to leave the room to catch some fresh air whether they are going out with each other only to be told this is none of your business. Or asking your landlord who rented out a furnished room with a wobbly desk whether he would mind screwing the table to get a horrified stare. (Happened to me. Had to learn second meanings the hard way).
I enjoy your blog a lot. More of this, please.